The death toll in Syria’s violent crackdown on opposition to President Bashar al-Assad in the city of Hama and elsewhere climbed on Tuesday, spurring Western efforts to pile diplomatic pressure on Damascus.

The Ministry of Defence has agreed to pay £100,000 compensation to the family of an Iraqi teenager who drowned near Basra after being detained by British troops. In an out-of-court settlement with his relatives’ British lawyers, the MoD did not admit liability for the death of 18-year-old Saeed Shabram in May 2003.

We shrink at that question. If forced to answer, some reply: “All human life is of infinite value.” Others cite the Jewish teaching that if you put one human life on one side of a scale, and the rest of the world on the other side, the scale is balanced equally. Most just say that an Afghan life is worth the same as a British life, because all human lives are of equal value. Isn’t that what we all believe?

The Ministry of Defence has been paying compensation to Afghans for accidentally killing their children, their brothers and sisters, or their parents, during the fighting in Afghanistan. Thanks to a freedom of information request from the Guardian, we know how much the MoD has paid families when a member has been killed. Here are some examples: daughter hit by shrapnel from air-strike and later died of injuries, $1,000; mother killed during bombing, $5,000; two brothers and two sons killed by hellfire missile strike, $32,000. The variation in the figures is not explained, but in no case was more than $8,000 (about £5,000), paid for the loss of a single life. (more…)